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Do residents have legal standing to block digital sign on parkway?

Lawyers made their arguments, pro and con, before Commonwealth Court yesterday. No one knows when the court will rule.

MARY TRACY, president of Scenic Philadelphia, has been an outspoken thorn in the side of the billboard and digital-sign industry for years.

Now that there's a plan for a digital sign on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Tracy is quick to note that in 2013 the American Planning Association listed the boulevard as "one of the 10 Great Streets in America."

Here's a quote from APA chief executive Paul Farmer: "Benjamin Franklin Parkway is an iconic boulevard, on the scale of the Champs-Elysees in Paris."

And the Parkway is in the running for a vote for the 10 Best Arts Districts in the nation.

That nationally recognized beauty is one reason Tracy said she joined with nearby neighbors of the Franklin Institute to try to stop the museum from converting its current double-faced, static sign into two digital signs.

But Tracy and nine neighbors went to Commonwealth Court yesterday mainly to fight for the legal standing to challenge the signs.

In an earlier suit in Common Pleas Court, Judge Alice Beck Dubow ruled last year that they don't have standing because they don't live next door to or across the street from the museum.

Yesterday, Samuel Stretton, who represents the neighbors, said: "Without standing, there's no one to challenge these illegal signs.

"The city is not enforcing the sign laws," he added.

In its brief, the Franklin Institute said it wants to make the two signs, at 20th and Winter streets, digital to alert the public of the changing exhibits more quickly than the current vinyl signs allow.

In July 2012, when the Franklin Institute applied for a permit for the digital signs, the Department of Licenses and Inspections refused. An official said that intermittently flashing signs are not permitted on the Parkway under city laws.

The museum appealed to the Zoning Board of Adjustment, which granted the zoning variance to allow the digital signs.

Last night, Michael Sklaroff, an attorney for the Franklin Institute, said the city's sign code does not define "flashing" or "intermittent."

"We had expert testimony from an experienced engineer who said that this was neither flashing nor intermittent," he said. Sklaroff said the message on the sign would change no more frequently than every 20 seconds.

"It's a continuous flow, not on and off," he said. "It's not flashing and flickering."